Development and Democracy

IT for Change's work in the area of development and democracy critically examines the digital paradigms of development and the opportunities and challenges it presents for deepening democracy, global justice and citizen rights. We believe that an equitable information society can flourish only through inclusive and informed debate, involving all stakeholders, especially from the global South. Given the prevalence of Northern perspectives and market-centric thinking in current ICTs for development approaches, we have consciously attempted to articulate alternatives through our research and policy engagement. Techno-architectures must be designed and governed for democratising power, so that countries, communities and individuals at the peripheries can renegotiate their place in the world. From concerns spanning e-governance, public information systems and data in governance to emerging policies in global trade, data governance and the very architectures of Internet policy, ideas of justice must be coded into the legal-institutional architectures of digital technology.

RECENT

Fondation Botnar has commissioned IT for Change to develop a nuanced framework, focussing on ‘Health Data as Global Public Good' to centrally include community ownership of data into it. The working paper is expected to lay out the nature, role and governance of health data in the emerging digital society and economy. This is to be done in a…

The world is presently facing a global health pandemic as many countries battle the widespread transmission of COVID-19 that has already cost the lives of almost 42,000 and afflicted nearly 858,000 people. The healthcare community across nations is engaged in desperate attempts to…

IT for Change was among 150 signatories to an open letter led by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), urging Gilead Sciences to give up its exclusive rights on patents and regulatory and trial data in remdesivir. Monopoly-based patents regime in this could obstruct access to lifesaving treatment for Covid-19.

The platform model has emerged as a game changing force, transforming economic activity across key sectors. Platformization as the process of such a shift towards new modes of production and exchange serves as the pièce de résistance of global economic organization in the…

IT for Change is pleased to launch its two-year regional project on 'Unskewing' the Platform Value Chain: Examining Role of Policy in Shaping Equitable Data Economies’. Supported by the Omidyar Network, this project will continue on the heels of our first phase of research on policies for the platform economy, a 14-country initiative that…

It is becoming increasingly evident that the far-reaching impacts of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) warrant immediate attention to the digitalisation of society itself. AI is not just another technology that has emerged on the horizon. On the contrary, it is a general purpose technology akin to…